


tribute

by saaifione



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: (i have weird feels), (no longer a realm), (no points for guessing who), (sorry Jotunheim), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brother Feels, Gen, Internalized racism, Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, POV Second Person, i don't think i really ever do anything else, mortal Thor, never got around to posting, ridiculously old, Ásgarðr | Asgard (realm)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 11:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1742807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saaifione/pseuds/saaifione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a gift, a compliment; an obligation to make such a payment</p><p>You have yet to give Thor a present for his coronation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tribute

**Author's Note:**

> I am entirely too arbitrary about the things I decide to post and the things I never let see the light of day. So. One step towards remedying this.

The thing is: you have yet to give Thor a present for his coronation.  
  
  
Officially, there would have been a ceremony for such things. Officially, the ceremony would have been during the post-coronation banquet. Yet it seemed that everyone had agreed that the ceremony was a mere formality in any case, and in all the weeks leading up to the occasion Thor had been showered with gifts and favors. Golden apples from the vendors. Trinkets from the smiths. Smiles because Thor always made people smile, because he was an easy prince to love.  
  
  
The Warriors Three had given him a party, a tour through the city's many taverns,  _one last night of merriment before you're shackled to the throne_! Only it had lasted three nights instead of one, and would have lasted more, if you hadn't dragged Thor back into the palace so he could be properly sober for his own coronation.  
  
  
Sif had given him a punch to the gut during a particularly drunken brawl and one of her rare, gentle smiles. "You will make a good king," she had said, hand clasped above her heart in fealty, and you knew of all the things she'd never tell.  
  
  
The All-Mother had given him a cape, woven from the fibers of Yggdrasil, with a charm sung into their threads. "For the foes he shall slay," she had hummed as you watched her work, thinking of the prophecies she could weave, "but more importantly for the fealty he may claim", and when she bent to kiss the hem, the dye had spread like blood.

 

* * *

  
The room is small, cramped. Lit with an ugly brightness from but the smallest spark of imagination. You wonder how he can stand it.  
  
  
"Brother, what sort of trickery is this?" Thor asks, eyes shadowed with something akin to wariness and voice lined the slightest bit of joy. He cannot believe the boon that is offered to him- and why should he? Thor has always been a creature of instincts rather than stratagems, must have scented out your deception long before you ever knew the truth.  
  
  
They all must have.  
  
  
(A joke, a joke - you love those. You've just never known the meaning of this one until now. Thor will enjoy the joke when you tell him, you think. You have always been able to make him laugh.)  
  
  
"Brother, what sort of cruelty is this?"  
  
  
You can almost look down at him, this way, sitting scruffy and threadbare, hands clasped above his knee. He gazes at you: blue, blue eyes, eyes like the summer sky of Asgard, like the snows of Jotunheim if they could be anything other than cold.  
  
  
It is a good play at humility, you think. An almost perfect imitation.  
  
  
When had Thor become such a good liar? As if handful of days and a cadre of Midgardians could shape him into this person, a creature against its mettle. (As if a handful of centuries and a play of domesticity could tame a savage beast.)  
  
  
(You get bitten with that sort of sentimentality. You get eaten alive.)  
  
  
"You said our father dead," he says, our father, and you've caught him in a lie.  
  
  
"I say a lot of things," you smile, "which you often come to misunderstand. This is but a little thing. A simple thing. I'll tell you something that's much more sensational to hear."  
  
  
He looks at you, tentative, curious, more than a little heartbroken, and you lean in close, curl your hand against his neck.  
  
  
"You can come home," you say, gentle and benign, and you make the better liar yet.

 

* * *

  
The paths between worlds are slippery places. Dark and shrouded and if you wandered off the path you could get lost for days. Years and lifetimes. You could spirit Thor away.  
  
  
Monsters, you recall, hiding beneath your bed. Be a good child or they'll come after you, they'll pull you into the Void.  
  
  
"What is so funny, brother?" Thor asks, voice almost close enough to breathe. He sounds troubled, but not nearly troubled enough.  
  
  
There is a brightness creeping into his smile, a bounce into his step, though he walks blindly through the darkness and mortality hangs about him like a noose. He shines even so, in this shadowed place.  
  
  
"You," you say, and realize you are laughing.  
  
  
"Ah- you have always been impulsive and brash. You could never react properly to danger even when it was breathing down your face."  
  
  
You are thinking of dragons and Muspelheim and warriors who earn their treasures slaying monsters, back when monsters were easy to spot. There is an entire section of the treasury dedicated to Thor's adolescent adventures, though you played a part in half. The dragons must all be dead, after that.  
  
  
(But they were good dreams, while they lasted.)  
  
  
"But you are here," Thor says, simply, blind in ways you cannot help, "So what danger should I fear?"  
  
  
Many, many. There is a wolf that bleeds shadows, that kills in the night. There is a serpent so hungry it eats its own tail. There are shades that cling and bury themselves into dreams. But there are far worse monsters than these.  
  
  
 _Mortal,_  you think. He'd be easy to kill.  
  
  
"And why must we travel along these paths, rather than upon the Bifrost?"  
  
  
"Do you really think it wise to announce your presence in such a fashion? Officially, you are still banished, you understand." It'll take more than your words to overrule the All-Father's. It'll take more than tricks to return the favor.  
  
  
Thor casts his gaze aside, as if ashamed. As if he knows what it is to feel shame, as if he has ever had a cause for it. He never had before, not for Asgard not for you. What have the human done to him? a part of you howls. Where is the reckless, golden Thor?  
  
  
It is wrong. It is wrongwrong _wrong_.  
  
  
You breathe. Think. Rationalize.  
  
  
Perhaps you are dreaming. Perhaps you're being fed nightmares by a monster beneath your bed.

 

* * *

  
  
You arrive in the alcove just outside the All-Father's resting room, too deep in the personal wing to be intercepted by guards. It is a matter of practicality as much as it is convenience, the simplest foothold to grab upon with the path worn smooth through use.  
  
  
 _Look at how many visitors I've brought you today_ , you hum beneath your breath,  _Look at how convincingly I play the kind host._  The door opens soundless, guiltless, and you let the golden light wash past you, so soft that it can burn.  
  
  
There is a section of the wall blackened with soot. Thor doesn't notice, of course, as he passes you to approach the bed. He has never been one for details.  
  
  
You grind your foot on the patch of burnt floor as you pass: it is bitter and ugly like the one who made it, and you want Odin to see it when he wakes.  
  
  
"You see?" you say, as Thor approaches the bed. "He is perfectly alright." You haven't lied about that.  
  
  
"He looks old," Thor says, almost wonderingly, laying a hand upon his father's wrinkled cheek. "He looks as if might not wake." He turns next to his mother, her head cushioned upon her arms beside his father's chest. Thor reaches for her, one finger outstretched to curl about a tendril of her hair.  
  
  
"Don't touch her," you say, sharply, and his hand recoils from your tone. "It would be kinder to let her rest. She has tired herself out looking after him." Thor is lumbering and thoughtless and even restricted to mortal means he might disturb the light sleeping charm you cast upon her.  
  
  
"Let them have their sleep," you say, gesturing to the door. "We have more pressing matters to attend to." And you have no use for sentimentality or honor but this is something you'd rather they didn't see.

 

* * *

  
  
"I cannot return you from mortality," you are explaining, sincere, contrite. The landscape slips past you like a waterscape, and you could just magic the two of you to the Bifrost but you like this illusion of progression (come, walk with me: let us make this play of being equals).  
  
  
"That is something to be settled between the All-Father and yourself, bound by his words and his seidr."  
  
  
You could try breaking it but that would be  _treason_  you imply in your regret, letting the giddiness slip into something softer like agitation. You think, you could choke on the irony, but that'd be an anticlimactic way to die.  
  
  
"But you see, I believe that you can convince him to revoke the banishment. I am certain of it. So there's no point in holding it off any longer. I would like to give you a gift for your coronation."  
  
  
There is no time for him to have a proper reaction to your words. The Bifrost sparks weakly as you approach it, a sputtering, dying thing. It would hardly have been fit to travel upon, and Thor must realize for how his eyes widen with alarm, before they are drawn away to the distance.  
  
  
You almost wonder at that (he has never been one for details), for it is hardly much of a sight, a ring of dust and ice without the Bifrost to illuminate it.  
  
  
"Is that Jotunheim?" Thor exhales sharply, eyes dragging away from the wreckage to lay upon you. "Brother, what have you done?" There is almost caution in his voice. There is almost horror. (Liar, liar, what have the humans taught him that you never managed to do the same?)  
  
  
You think: even Thor could not have done this easily, just a hammer in hand with no casket to kill a realm. And still he suspected you first. You could almost say you are proud.  
  
  
Mjolnir has never liked you very much, has been ever high and mighty as the dwarven smiths that crafted her, so if she were here you would mock her, would whisper,  _I make a better tool than you_. But it's good that she isn't here, because that means Thor cannot stop you.  
  
  
"Are you not happy?" you ask, almost petulantly. "Well no matter, that wasn't the main gift anyway."  
  
  
You are getting tired of the bewildered look on his face, so you pull him close, tangle your fingers in his hair, let your voice drop low as you whisper in his ear. A lifetime ago, you would have called his an embrace.  
  
  
"Here is your secret:" you say, "I am not your brother."  
  
  
The knife thumps softly into your palm as you let it slide out of your sleeve and you feel Thor pull back, stepping dangerously toward the edge of the Bifrost. You pull him back distractedly because that would be horrible way to go, and there's no way Thor would survive that, mortal as he is now.  
  
  
"Brother-" he starts, and you cut, " _Not_  your brother," such a slow creature that he can be it would be quickest just to show him. So you do.  
  
  
There's enough life left in the Casket and enough magic still saturating the air for you to tangle up some of its power and pour it through your veins.  
  
  
Seeing the way Thor's eyes widen at the numbing of your skin, the way he crouches instinctively, the way he reaches for Mjolnir though she isn't there: you classify this emotion as satisfaction. As victory.  _I told you so._  
  
  
In these last moments something like comprehension flickers upon Thor's face. You would examine all the nuances of his expression, but the buildup and the climax, you want the timing to be perfect.  
  
  
You laugh, and it is almost a happy sound, you can almost think it worth it.  
  
  
"And now," you smile, angling the knife toward your throat. "I have slain all the monsters."

 

* * *

  
  
(There is a part of you that is- pleased. It is not too gentle a word to attribute to yourself, for an occasion such as this.  
  
  
You think: no one will give him a better gift than this.)

 


End file.
